The instant invention relates to a simple, yet highly efficient and effective as well as economical, means and method for providing resilient roller sleeves, either as original or retrofit and replacement equipment, upon bare rollers of roller conveyors typically used in accomplishing the conveyancing of reinforcing bar material to and from a shear line cutting station.
Under current material handling and health and safety regulations as applied to the processing and use of concrete construction reinforcing bar, two relatively new requirements must be met. First, as a consequence of structural failures of concrete bridges and buildings erected with the use of rust-coated steel reinforcing bar, it is now necessary to prevent rust forming on the reinforcing bar by surfacing it with a protective epoxy coating which must be maintained from manufacture of the reinforcing material through handling and processing to ultimate use. Second, in the processing of reinforcing bar through a shear line in cutting it to the required lengths for a particular job, and in consideration of shear line worker health and safety, it is now also necessary to substantially reduce the otherwise very high and continuous noise levels characteristically associated with the reinforcing bar shearing line operation.
Typically, the conveyancing machinery employed in a reinforcing bar shearing line operation, for both input and output transport of reinforcing bar material to and from the cutting station, employ bare steel rollers which not only nick and damage the reinforcing bar epoxy coating during conveyancing, but also create extremely high metal-to-metal noise levels.
Functionally, one very effective means and method of overcoming both of the foregoing problems with regard to processing coated reinforcing bar through a roller conveyor shear line is to cover the conveyor rollers with a resilient sleeve as taught by Mushovic in U.S. Pat. No. 4,312,444 dated Jan. 26, 1982, thereby eliminating the bare metal impact and resultant nicking and damage caused by uncovered rollers upon the epoxy coating as aforesaid, and also reducing substantially the high operational noise levels otherwise associated with metal-to-metal contact in accomplishing reinforcing bar conveyancing through a shear line by means of bare metal rollers whether powdered or idler. In practical application, however, although the Mushovic conveyor roller would be useful in new roller conveyor construction for a shear line, because of the relatively permanent manner in which rollers and roller bearings were typically installed in roller conveyor frames of older machines it would be both expensive and difficult to replace or retrofit the bare metal rollers of older shear line conveyors with the newer rollers as taught by Mushovic.
Although structurally similar in appearance to the roller sleeve of instant invention, the roller sleeve as taught by Lounsbury, Jr., et al in U.S. Pat. No. 4,646,677 dated Mar. 3, 1987, is not only for a totally different application, but is distinguished in that it has a closed or joined spiral construction rather than the separable roller sleeve construction of instant invention.
The applicant herein by his invention provides not only new and novel means and methods for solving the problems of coating damage and excessive noise levels when conveying protectively coated reinforcing bar through a shear line operation, but provides through his separable roller sleeve an efficient and economical solution to the problem of retrofitting older shear line roller conveyor rollers with resilient roller covers, and although some of the functions and elements of the present invention have been separately disclosed in the art there has been no finding of a description therein, nor a reasonable combination thereof when put together, which shows that combination of elements resulting in the present structure and methods of making and employing a separable roller sleeve.